Pencil and stippled drawing of a moth with a crescent moon, the words Always Find The Light and geometric construction lines, shown as an unplaced tattoo design.

Moth and crescent moon design with lettering

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed drawing of a moth with spread wings, shaded with fine stippling and hatching, sits centrally above a crescent moon. The words ALWAYS, FIND, THE and LIGHT are set in outlined serif capitals along diagonal dashed construction lines, with triangles and loops framing the composition. The image is greyscale pencil on pale paper, with no body part visible.

Geometric Dotwork Moth Crescent moon Lettering Triangle Geometric line Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The moth had been battering the chandelier since the second waltz, and Mr Hollis wanted it gone before the Lancers. I stood on a cloakroom chair with a tea towel, waiting for it to drop, while the band below ran through 'Moonlight Serenade' for the third time that night.

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It came down at last, not into my towel but onto the brass rail of the balcony, where it sat folding and unfolding its wings like someone rereading a letter they already knew by heart. Above the proscenium the painted words still read ALWAYS FIND THE LIGHT, though the paint had flaked off the F, so regulars swore it said ALWAYS IND THE LIGHT and argued about it over their stout. My father painted those letters the summer the hall reopened. He used to say a dance hall was a place for moths and fools, and he counted himself in both.

At twenty to eleven the power dipped, the chandelier guttered, and the whole room went blue with moonlight through the high windows. People laughed and kept dancing. The moth lifted off the rail and drifted toward the one lit thing left, the little green exit sign above the fire door, and I thought of Dad, who never walked toward any light without checking it for draughts first.

I went after it. Halfway across the floor a sailor with a crooked tie caught my hand and we turned under the dark, slow and clumsy. When the lamps came back at midnight the moth was resting on the edge of my dance card, wings flat as a pressed flower. I didn't have the heart to shift it, so I folded the card carefully and carried it home in my coat pocket, still faintly warm from the bulbs.